Mara swallowed. Her gaze drifted to her loose burlap sleeve. Hunted in a land so close to her heart, yet so very strange, and there she stood at the edge of the city’s heart. Her arms began to tremble.
Giving up now?
Olessa’s voice whispered in her mind.
Mara spun away and rocked her son. “I should never have made it this far.”
Take the step, Mara
. Gia’s voice was a soft tickle down her neck.
You must take this step. The night will not last forever.
“Don’t be afraid,” Mara said, although she meant her words more for herself than her son. “What would you do, Gia? You would stride up these stairs like the king himself owed you coin. Olessa would have already been banging on his bedroom doors and threatening to feed him his chamber pot.”
Mara faced the stairs. She placed her foot upon the first step. Then, she climbed them. The air cleared with each step higher. Halfway up, the narrow stairs rose above the last tiled roofs of Upper Sollan.
Wind whistled in her ears and kissed her dry lips with its cool caress. She tightened her grip on her son and darted up the last steep flight.
She reached the top and twisted around as a gust billowed through her cloak. Below her, Sollan spilled out like a forest of brick and stone and tile. The city stretched into the distance, lanes upon lanes, homes upon homes, until the Sapphire Sea met the shore and slowed the city’s spread. Although the sea sought to stop the city, Sollan’s docks still thrust their long fingers over the water as if in defiance of the place where men were never meant to tread.
“And the Floatwaif,” she whispered.
Mara’s heart skipped a beat. She leaned onto the balls of her feet and squinted. In the distance, beneath the shadow of the mighty titan set upon the horizon, she spied the bobbing grid of Floatwaif, the barges flecked with swaying lanterns dancing like fairies over the Sapphire Sea’s waters.
She waved like a little girl at the lights. Even if a thousand people surrounded her, she still would have giggled like a toddler at the sight of her home. Mara looked to her son and smiled. “Has it really only been hours since we left them? I feel like we’ve crossed half of Urum tonight.”
The lights of Floatwaif glittered on the waves. Mara slowly shook her head and let the vision sink into her memory. “And yet, I already feel a stranger. I miss you, Gia. Even you, Olessa, with your hard lessons and silk glove. I wish you could be here now. I wish you could see our home. We are not poor from a distance. We are a field of stars floating on the waves. It is so beautiful.”
Tears welled in Mara’s lids. She wiped them on her sleeve and turned from the world she knew. Atop the raised table she scaled, a vast park full of tall palms, aromatic junipers, and massive olive trees sprouted. Between the trees, the tall grasses were filled with poppies every color of a brilliant flame. Long, placid ponds held Eloian swans purer white than the belly of a fresh cloud. Athe peacocks squawked amongst the grasses. Their feathers shimmered slate and sapphire in the starlight, crowning their thin heads in brilliant, feathery halos.
“And this is the Blooming Ring,” she said.
The park she faced, the beautiful, serene picture of heaven she saw, it all ended at the high wall surrounding Sollan’s heart. Mara thought the stairs she had just scaled tall. She thought the wall separating the upper and lower city mighty. The one she faced dwarfed them both. The park stretched toward it. It encircled the wall like a moat of blossoms and ponds.
If something lay beyond the barrier, she could not see it. Hightable’s wall towered over her world. Whatever it guarded would not be given up easily.
“Hightable,” she whispered. “They built you to turn back the titans themselves.”
“Men, did you hear something?” a man called from the base of the stairs.
Mara recoiled, shuffling away from the top steps. She clutched her son and stared at the stairs, the only sound disturbing the night was the wind tossing her robe around her legs like a playful patron.
No other call rang from below. Slowly, Mara leaned forward, peeking down the flight. A familiar pole with lanterns fastened to its upper end appeared, bobbing with the footsteps of the soldier who carried it.
Mara spun around and sprinted into the park. She passed beneath long, looping boughs and enormous, knotted trunks. Tall grasses tickled her knuckles and lapped at her son’s burlap.
She reached a pond that came nearly to the high wall. The barrier’s shadow blanketed everything around her in a tranquil black filled with chirping crickets. Her breaths labored, her lungs burning, she hobbled to the water and crouched at the sloping shoreline.
The soldier’s patrol appeared at the steps. She watched the leader of the patrol scan the park, pointing his lantern like it might reveal Mara hiding at the water’s edge.
But the park was so large and the grasses so high that the man’s meager light couldn’t hope to chase away the shadows enveloping her. The lantern pointed away, and the soldier disappeared back down the steps.
Alone in the structure’s shadow, she lifted her chin, gazing at its imposing height. “I’d need wings to climb that. It really was built to keep a titan at bay.”
Her vision flicked to the enchanting sea and the black silhouette of the titan at the bay’s mouth.
They built this entire city expecting your return.
Mara stalked to the wall and placed a hand upon its stones. Her palm couldn’t find so much as a single imperfection or handhold in a single brick. She pressed her brow against its face and savored its cool kiss against her sweaty skin.
“What am I to do?” she wondered.
A gentle hand clasped her shoulder and squeezed. She recoiled, spinning around, her arm soldier-straight toward her attacker.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed. “I’m—I’m an evil sorceress, and I’ll turn you into a moth and smash you against the wall!”
She pressed her back against the stones. At first, nothing appeared in the darkness. Then, a milky mask melted from the black like the moon revealed from a passing thunderhead. The silent son’s expressionless mask nodded, angling to a side.
The adrenaline flooded from Mara’s veins on her sigh. “You really should be a little better about how you approach someone. What if I had a knife? I might have run you through.”
The silent son bowed. He calmly motioned down the curving wall. Mara peered in the direction he pointed. “But I don’t see anything.”
He dropped his arm and floated like a ghost down the base of the barrier. Mara followed in his footsteps, her eye ever on the park separating Hightable from the rest of the city.
“Why do they build the walls so high?” she asked the priest. “And why did you build your temples behind them? No army of men will ever scale Hightable.”
Of course, he did not answer. Mara scrunched her nose. “What is the Burning Mother’s temple like?”
The silent son continued on his quiet course. Mara rolled her eyes. “I need to find her temple. I don’t know why you help me, and I don’t know why the king and his awful serpents hunt me. Can you tell me anything? Anything at all?”
The silent son continued on his annoyingly silent way.
“You are very frustrating. I am a moon maiden, and I have lived my life doing nothing but pleasing others. This is my first time in the city that I can remember, and I come with my dead child in my arms because the Six demand it. What happens when I get here? Everyone in this city spits on me. They throw rocks at me. They hunt me. They want me dead! And for what?”
Her words lit a fire in her heart. She squeezed her son and picked up her pace. “And for what? Why are you here? Why am I here?”
While the silent son did not reply with words, he did halt. The priest of the Loyal Father stiffened. He whirled around, his soft black robe fluttering around him yet still not revealing a hint of the man beneath it.
His unblinking, emotionless mask stared over her shoulder. He leaned forward, the dark pits of his eyes scanning the park behind them.
He reached out and grabbed her arm. He ushered her onward, but this time, Mara had to run to keep up with the man.
“What is it?” she asked.
The silent son raised a hand, his palm inches from the wall. He never slowed, he never looked any direction but forward. He kept flying ever on with Mara in tow, his fingers caressing the stone face like a child might toy with a waterfall as they ran past its rushing waters.
Mara frowned at the man’s extended hand. She glanced at the wall, its face hidden beneath an impenetrable blanket of darkness. “What did you see?” she asked, her voice soft despite their frantic pace. “Who is chasing us? Those soldiers?”
Eyes weighed upon her back. Mara glanced behind her as the wall’s shadow peeled away like the petals of a flower peeling from a bud. The living black became other silent sons, their pale masks smiling, laughing, crying, and scowling behind her.
So the one helping me has been the same priest all along.
The other priests formed a wall behind her and herded her along the Blooming Ring. Her footsteps pounded against the soft earth. She hoisted her son higher and tried to ignore her burning lungs.
“Why are they here?” she asked. “What is wrong? I know something’s wrong. Please, you must tell me.”
The silent son broke into a full run, and so did Mara. The priests behind her nipped at her heels like hounds chasing a rabbit.
A long, thin structure like an arched walkway appeared along the curve of the wall. It jutted from the barrier’s top and spanned the distance of the Blooming Ring. Spindly arches supported it, and from its mouth a ribbon of water spilled in a snaking line into Upper Sollan.
“An aqueduct!” Mara exclaimed. “That is the way to climb this cursed wall?”
The silent son motioned frantically. He slowed, grabbing her wrist and keeping her momentum moving forward. He spun her past him, his brothers lining up beside him to form a barrier against the quiet shadows.
“Why are you stopping?” Mara looked frantically at the line of priests.
They turned to her, their masks a spectrum of every human emotion. They pointed over her shoulder at the massive aqueduct or pleaded with their pale fingers. While Mara couldn’t see their faces, their fear and anxiety washed over her like the waterfall spilling from the high channel.
“You’re not going to show me how to climb it?” she asked.
The silent sons frantically stuck their fingers toward the aqueduct. Slowly, Mara nodded. “I—I understand.”
She stepped back, turning to face the precarious path into Hightable. “Thank you,” she called, running toward the aqueduct. “I hope the Six bless all of you for your kindness!”
Mara darted into the thick grasses flowing toward the aqueduct. She knelt within them, their tall, tawny stalks closing over her.
The silent sons wanted her to climb the structure. She knew they risked much to get her there, but she would not leave until she knew what they feared. Maybe, just maybe, she would discover something important.
Shadows and soft grass enveloped Mara.
Long, thin stalks swayed before her vision like dancers on a stage.
Mara watched from her hiding spot, close to the silent sons, yet far enough away to remain hidden. The Mara from the House of Sin and Silk would never have stayed to see who or what the priests of the Loyal Father faced. But Mara no longer stood on the long, flat deck of the pleasure barge. Olessa would not be there to scold her. The strong boys would not be there to crack their knuckles. Gia would not be there to stand by her side.
Then again, Gia would have stayed to discover the truth. Gia would not have been afraid to see. If Mara wanted to save her son’s soul, she needed to be more like Gia and less like herself.
She glanced quickly at the sky. The stars still dazzled against the blackish field. The night was deep and dawn would sleep beneath the horizon for awhile yet. Mara had time enough.
She cradled her son close to her chest. She glanced down and smiled at his closed eyes and puckered lips. He would have been such a handsome man when he was grown. Moon maidens would have jumped to serve him.
Her heart twisted and hardened into a shard of coral.
No
, she thought,
he would not be one take moon maidens as patrons.
Movement interrupted her idle thoughts. A form that could have been sculpted from moonlight melted from the shadows before the silent sons.
Mara’s fingers tightened on her son. An ember of anger inflamed her heart.
The man wore pale wrappings that hid him head to toe. His hood cloaked his face in darkness. His fingers danced with anticipation.
Her eyes narrowed. “Brother Caspran,” she whispered.
Unlike her first encounter with the priest, Mara noticed that with moonlight framing his form, the daggers tucked into his garments glinted in the silvery light.
He squeezed his fists and rolled his shoulders. A breeze whipped through the park and sent the silent sons’ black robes flapping. They stood before the man without a word passing from their lips. As always, their masks revealed nothing of the men behind them.
Brother Caspran slipped his fingers into the folds of his clothes. He pulled his fingers out and brought with them a slender blade he danced over his knuckles. “Good evening, kindly priests. Did you by chance miss Good King Sol’s proclamation that all who’ve sworn oaths to the Six must confine their flesh to their houses of worship until Harvest Festival ends?”
The silent sons stiffened. The man flipped his dagger into the air, and it rose a glimmering shard against the wall. He caught it between his fingers and continued bouncing the razor over his knuckles.
“She is here, is she not? You’re hiding the whore somewhere in the pretty grasses of the Blooming Ring, are you not?” His shadowed gaze scanned the park. “There is only one who would bring you fools out from your dying god’s hovel tonight. You cluster together like a bunch of old hags watching their wigs being braided. There is of course no other reason you’d be in this place on this night other than for Mara.”